[A picture of a baby playing in the snow with a fox made of icicles.]
I is for the Ice tribes, the people of the north. They lived in the white before the Avatar came forth. Primals they all be, every last one from the oldest grandma to the youngest son.
-Sally Rider’s ABCs of Magic
—
Kole met up with his friends for lunch, and they all caught each other up on their recent experiences.
Kole told them all about his meeting with Professor Lonin, sharing all the details save the talk of wizardry.
“So, yer uncles gone for sure then,” Rakin said looking to Zale.
“It looks like it, but he could be back any day,” she said, forcing hope into her voice that she didn’t feel.
“Where exactly does he go?” Kole asked. “It must be far, I can feel him teleport, the magic is so strong. I can’t even feel Professor Underbrook’s teleport.”
Zale seemed to shrink in on herself, and even Rakin grew stony.
“We can’t say” Rakin answered for them both.
“Is it somewhere we can get a message to?” Kole pressed.
Rakin only shook his head.
Amara then gave them an update on the work she put into her tracker. She didn’t have a solution for their problem, but she claimed to have made some improvements. Kole tried to follow, but nothing she said seemed like a meaningful addition.
Then, Zale killed the mood by talking about her date with Harold.
“Mission-critical topics only,” Rakin said dryly, to which Zale stuck out her tongue, which was the same deep void black of her hair.
“Let’s go search for Amara’s sister,” Kole said, jumping on the opportunity to put an end to the topic.
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They began their search in the library after confirming that the dungeon door was still sealed.
“It’s not sealed,” Zale explained as they stood in the hallway where the door had been. “The dungeon chamber isn’t behind this wall, the door was a portal to where the dungeon sat in the Dahn.”
Amara then plied Zale with lots of questions about the Dahn’s structure and shape, all of which answers Kole was very interested to learn—unfortunately, Zale didn’t know them.
Their search was slightly less of a wild goose chase—or mole chase, depending on who you asked. Kole had suggested the phrase ‘flying fish hunt’ and only received strange looks.
“It’s an idiom!” Kole had insisted.
“Something around here is an idiom, that’s for sure,” Rakin said in reply.
They were led deep into the library, and this time,—whether due to Zale’s presence or chance—they reached a doorway to an abandoned dormitory once more. This one was different from the one they’d visited previously, as made evident by the lack of scorched ruins.
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“Be careful everyone,” Zale said, drawing her sword once they entered the room.
To avoid strange looks while walking through the library with weapons, Kole followed the group through the library’s entrance while invisible, holding his quarterstaff, Zale’s sword, and Doug’s bow.
They traveled down the hall without event, coming to another dining hall, identical to the one in which they’d faced the ice people. They checked the ruined ice box and found it free of other realmly invaders.
Following the tracker, they made their way down the dormitory hall that led from the opposite side of the dining hall.
A dozen steps in, Doug signaled them to stop, sniffing the air even as he did. It was then Kole noticed the stench, and Doug pointed to an open door deeper in.
They went forward as a group with Amara waiting far behind until it was clear, Zale was wearing her plate, which had garnered odd looks in the library, but wasn’t the strangest sight the Academy’s students had seen on campus even that week. Despite the armor, Zale’s silence aura made her completely silent.
Kole watched her creep along, impressed by the trained grace she walked with even when her silence was guaranteed. Through their training, Rakin had discovered that Zale’s silence aura even made her footsteps through stone invisible to his tremor sense, but the area where she stood turned into a blind spot for him. Not as noticeable as a footstep, but noticeable all the same if he was on alert.
Kole was practiced at walking silently, but to be safe employed his Fade ability to encourage any potential listeners to ignore any sound he Rakin and Doug might make, though the other two boys hardly needed the added benefit.
We are oddly well-equipped for sneaking around. Kole considered as he watched Zale creep ahead in front.
Normally, adventuring parties had to keep their heavy fighters in the back while the stealthier members scouted ahead, splitting the party with potentially fatal results. They, however, could spring an ambush, leading with their most durable member. Sure, she couldn’t actually hear anything when in the front, but with Rakin and Doug nearby to signal her, it was a small price to pay.
Suddenly Rakin poked Kole in the stomach, gently.
Kole looked from Zale to the dwarf, who was staring at him reproachfully. When it was clear from Kole’s face that he had no idea what earned the poke, Rakin opened his eyes wide, put on a vacant stare, and let his jaw drop as if he were in awe of some sight, then he cocked his head to his cousin.
Kole suddenly felt like the tunnel was growing hot, and he was certain it wasn’t Rakin.
Have I been starrng? Did she notice? Pull yourself together.
He shook his head, to clear his thoughts and then nodded to Rakin. The exchange had taken only a moment and Rakin quickly caught up to Zale in the front, Doug only looking at them both, not understanding what had just occurred.
They got to the door, and everyone hugged the wall. The smell had grown much worse, and Kole had to fight himself from retching. He couldn’t even begin to describe the smell, but it was by far the worst thing he’d ever smelled in his life—and he’d once locked himself into a barrel of giant lobster excrement.
Kole signaled that he hadn’t felt any attention on them with his Fade ability before Kole dropped it to turn invisible and peek his head through the door. This whole maneuver was a tactic they’d practiced during their group training time, but that training hadn’t prepared Kole for the sight beyond that door.
Carnage filled the room that had once housed students. Yellowish-green liquid coated the walls, looking to have been smudged as if someone had tried to clean it. Mingled among the broken furniture of the room, broken shards of carapace littered the floor with one giant human-sized insect lying in the middle of it all. The creature had the head of a man, only it was black, and made of the same hard shell material that lay strewn around it. The creature had once had six limbs but was missing a leg and one of its four arms.
Once Kole saw the features of the mostly intact monster, he recognized that some of the broken shells were in fact the limbs, heads, and torsos of similar creatures. And, judging by the residue on the last semi-whole creature’s face, some amount of cannibalism had been at play.
Obviously, Kole threw up everywhere over the scene, breaking his invisibility.
Zale and Rakin rushed in as soon as he appeared, and not hearing the retching that led up to the reappearance, Zale didn’t see the stream of vomit coming that Kole spewed all over her back.
Whether or not the sight and smells alone would have made Zale throw up will never be known, but the addition of the stench of Kole’s vomit and the sickly wet warmth as it seeped through her armor pushed her over the edge, causing her to begin retching herself. Distantly, in the back of his mind as he recoiled in horror from both the scene and his own actions Kole noticed a familiar black stone door disappear from the rear wall of the room.